Stories by Jim Battey

Several positive economic developments pushed the E-Business Barometer up 26 percent in June. Dot-com-related job cuts fell to their lowest levels since November 2000 and the dollar value of merger-and-acquisition activity involving Internet companies doubled to US$6.0 billion from May.

Chief Information Officers make excellent money and are generally satisfied with their compensation, but they work longer hours than nearly all other IT professionals, reports the 2000 InfoWorld Compensation Survey (full survey is online at www.infoworld.com).

Database certifications are vendor-specific, so credentials are issued by the software companies. As Oracle Corp. grows in popularity in the enterprise, DBA certifications from Sybase Inc. and Informix Corp. have become nearly extinct.

Prospects look bright for help desk managers. In fact, there is higher demand for technical support professionals than any other IT position, according to the Information Technology Association of America.

With the demand for highly skilled technical professionals as strong as ever, the outlook for self-employed IT consultants and contractors is promising. Roughly half of all consultants are reported to be independent contractors.

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